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45

Rebuilding the Asylum System

Sep 26, 2015 | GEORGE SOROS
PARAGRAPH FEATURED
European leaders emerged from yet another summit this week, having made

1
ADDED
ABOUT ONE YEAR
AFTER REPORT
only modest progress towards definitively addressing a refugee crisis that What NATO’s Northern
ORGINALLY has caused enormous human suffering and shaken the EU to its core. The Expansion Means
PUBLISHED
time for partial measures is long past; a comprehensive plan is needed. Apr 21, 2022 | 
CARL BILDT

N
26.9.2015

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EW YORK – The European Union needs to accept responsibility for the
lack of a common asylum policy, which has transformed this year’s This Inflation Is
Demand-Driven and
growing influx of refugees from a manageable problem into yet
Persistent
another political crisis. Each member state has selfishly focused on its
Apr 20, 2022 | 
JASON
own interests, often acting against the interests of others. This precipitated
FURMAN
panic among asylum seekers, the general public, and the authorities
responsible for law and order. Asylum seekers have been the main victims.

3
Will the Ukraine War
The EU needs a comprehensive plan to respond to the crisis, one Upend the Sustainability
Economics that reasserts effective governance over the flows of asylum- Agenda?
seekers so that they take place in a safe, orderly way, and at a Apr 21, 2022 | 
GILLES MOËC
pace that reflects Europe’s capacity to absorb them. To be & BERTRAND BADRÉ
comprehensive, the plan has to extend beyond the borders of

4
Europe. It is less disruptive and much less expensive to maintain
potential asylum-seekers in or close to their present location. The False Promise of
Democratic Peace
The Growth Engines As the origin of the current crisis is Syria, the fate of the Syrian Apr 19, 2022 | 
ROBERT
population has to be the first priority. But other asylum seekers SKIDELSKY
Are Sputtering
and migrants must not be forgotten. Similarly, a European plan

5
MOHAMED A. EL-ERIAN
worries that must be accompanied by a global response, under the authority
the global economy’s darkening War in a World that
of the United Nations and involving its member states. This would
outlook points to even deeper Stands for Nothing
problems ahead. distribute the burden of the Syrian crisis over a larger number of
states, while also establishing global standards for dealing with Apr 18, 2022 | 
SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK

the problems of forced migration more generally.

5

Here are the six components of a comprehensive plan.

First, the EU has to accept at least a million asylum-seekers

annually for the foreseeable future. And, to do that, it must share the burden
fairly – a principle that a qualified majority finally established at last
Wednesday’s summit.

Adequate financing is critical. The EU should provide €15,000 ($16,800) per

asylum-seeker for each of the first two years to help cover housing, health care,
and education costs – and to make accepting refugees more appealing to
member states. It can raise these funds by issuing long-term bonds using its
largely untapped AAA borrowing capacity, which will have the added benefit of
providing a justified fiscal stimulus to the European economy.

It is equally important to allow both states and asylum-seekers to

express their preferences, using the least possible coercion.
Placing refugees where they want to go – and where they are
wanted – is a sine qua non of success.

Second, the EU must lead the global effort to provide adequate

funding to Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey to support the four
million refugees currently living in those countries.

PS Events: Finance 3.0 Thus far, only a fraction of the funding needed for even basic care
has been raised. If education, training, and other essential needs
At Finance 3.0, our latest virtual
are included, the annual costs are at least €5,000 per refugee, or
event, Jeremy Allaire, Hester Peirce,
Carmen Reinhart, Raghuram Rajan, €20 billion. EU aid today to Turkey, though doubled last week, still
and more considered how to amounts to just €1 billion. In addition, the EU also should help
maximize the benefits and mitigate create special economic zones with preferred trade status in the
the risks of cryptocurrencies, digital
region, including in Tunisia and Morocco, to attract investment
payments, and decentralized finance.
and generate jobs for both locals and refugees.
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The EU would need to make an annual commitment to frontline
countries of at least €8-10 billion, with the balance coming from
the United States and the rest of the world. This could be added to the amount
of long-term bonds issued to support asylum-seekers in Europe.

Third, the EU must immediately start building a single EU Asylum and

Migration Agency and eventually a single EU Border Guard. The current
patchwork of 28 separate asylum systems does not work: it is expensive,
inefficient, and produces wildly inconsistent results in determining who
qualifies for asylum. The new agency would gradually streamline procedures;
establish common rules for employment and entrepreneurship, as well as
consistent benefits; and develop an effective, rights-respecting return policy for
migrants who do not qualify for asylum.

Fourth, safe channels must be established for asylum-seekers, starting with

getting them from Greece and Italy to their destination countries. This is very
urgent in order to calm the panic. The next logical step is to extend safe avenues
to the frontline region, thereby reducing the number of migrants who make the
dangerous Mediterranean crossing. If asylum-seekers have a reasonable
chance of ultimately reaching Europe, they are far more likely to stay where
they are. This will require negotiating with frontline countries, in cooperation
with the UN Refugee Agency, to establish processing centers there – with
Turkey as the priority.

The operational and financial arrangements developed by the EU should be

used to establish global standards for the treatment of asylum-seekers and
migrants. This is the fifth piece of the comprehensive plan.

Finally, to absorb and integrate more than a million asylum seekers and
migrants a year, the EU needs to mobilize the private sector – NGOs, church
groups, and businesses – to act as sponsors. This will require not only sufficient
funding, but also the human and IT capacity to match migrants and sponsors.

The exodus from war-torn Syria should never have become a crisis. It was long
in the making, easy to foresee, and eminently manageable by Europe and the
international community. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has now
also produced a six-point plan to address the crisis. But his plan, which
subordinates the human rights of asylum-seekers and migrants to the security
of borders, threatens to divide and destroy the EU by renouncing the values on
which it was built and violating the laws that are supposed to govern it.

The EU must respond with a genuinely European asylum policy that will put an
end to the panic and the unnecessary human suffering.

PS Events: Finance 3.0

At Finance 3.0, our latest virtual event, Jeremy Allaire, Hester Peirce, Carmen
Reinhart, Raghuram Rajan, and more considered how to maximize the benefits
and mitigate the risks of cryptocurrencies, digital payments, and decentralized
finance.

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GEORGE SOROS
Writing for PS since 1997
120 Commentaries

George Soros is Chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society
Foundations. A pioneer of the hedge-fund industry, he is the author of many books,
including The Alchemy of Finance, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit
Crisis of 2008 and What it Means, and The Tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration
or Revival? His most recent book is In Defense of Open Society (Public Affairs, 2019). 

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